Jan 16, 2009

Business - RIL to start exporting fuel this month

NEW DELHI: After commissioning its new refinery worth $6 billion at its special economic zone (SEZ) at Jamnagar in Gujarat last month, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) is all set to begin fuel exports from this month.

“All our processing units at the new refinery will be ready in the next few days; we will then start exporting fuel,” Reliance Industries President (Refinery Business) P. Raghavendran said.

Secondary units

Speaking to journalists at the international conference on oil and gas ‘Petrotech 2009’ here, Mr. Raghavendran said the secondary units would be commissioned in the next few days and during the course of this month products would be exported. He, however, refused to elaborate on the countries and markets the company was targeting.

In December, Reliance had started the export-only refinery with refining capacity of 5.8 lakh barrels a day. The company plans to sell gasoline, gas oil and jet fuel in the U.S., European and African markets.

With its parent refinery’s capacity of 6.6 lakh barrels a day, Reliance’s Jamnagar facility has become the world’s largest refining hub.

Reliance Petroleum refinery has been completed in 36 months from concept to commissioning, which is a new benchmark for building a grassroots refinery of this scale and complexity.

Greenfield projects

According to Mr. Raghavendran, Reliance Industries is also looking at opportunities to set up refineries worldwide. “We want to set up greenfield refinery projects and also take up expansion of existing refineries globally,” he said, without disclosing any country or region.

Stating that Reliance’s endeavour was to be highly competitive in the refining business, he said there were 19 refineries in the country, with an aggregate capacity of 160 million tonnes annually, and all of them have to sell products all over the globe and there was no escaping from being competitive. “We should be able to convert least expensive crude oil into high-value products at lowest possible cost to survive the competition,” he said.